Devil's Arithmetic

Verse 1

Leather worn black from ten years riding

Tank half full, conscience half empty

Left a town that knew too much about me

Left before they tried to make me pay the entry

Pine trees blurring at sixty miles

Rain coming sideways off the gulf

The only church I ever understood

Was a long road calling my bluff

Chorus

Two lane reckoning, devil's arithmetic

Add it all up and ride away

Two lane reckoning, the math don't stick

When you're gone before the break of day

Verse 2

Shared a bottle with a man in Tuscaloosa

Neither one of us asked for a name

Men who ride like we ride through the nighttime

Understand the rules of that game

He pointed south, I pointed west

We nodded and went our way

Two ships passing on a blacktop ocean

Neither one built to stay

Bridge

The warrant yellows in some county office

The judge retires, the deputy forgets

A man who keeps moving long enough

Outlasts most of his debts